The terms of the Treaty
of Versailles imposed upon Germany at the end World War I sowed
the seeds of World War 2 by stripping Germany of territory and requiring
her to pay huge reparations to the victorious powers. The demands
in Germany for vengeance were given added stimulus when Adolf Hitler
and the Nazi party came to power in January 1933. By early 1939
Germany had thrown off the shackles of the Versailles treaty, remilitarised
the Rhineland introduced conscription, annexed Austria and occupied
Czechoslovakia. The seeds of war were almost ripe!

30/01/1933

Hitler appointed Chancellor
of Germany by President Paul von Hindenburg.

03/02/1933

German Chancellor Adolf
Hitler tells his top generals of his determination to conquer
land, to the east.

27/02/1933

German Reichstag burns
down. Four Communists are tried and executed for
setting the fire.

12/03/1933

First Concentration Camp
opened at Oranienburg outside Berlin.

13/03/1933

Joseph Goebbels is made Reich Minister
for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.

Nazi party declared official
party of Germany; all other parties banned.

14/10/1933

Germany withdraws from the Disarmament
Conference at Geneva, Switzerland.

21/10/1933

German Chancellor Adolf
Hitler withdraws Germany from the League of Nations.

26/01/1934

Germany and Poland sign
a ten-year non-aggression pact.

01/03/1934

Henry Pu-yi was crowned emperor of
Manchukuo by the Japanese.

05/05/1934

The 1932 non-aggression pact betwen
the Soviet Union and Poland is extended to the end of 1945.

30/06/1934

Hitler orders the elimination
of much of the political and military opposition within Germany,
including SA Chief Ernst Rohm in what is known as the "Night
of the Long Knives". More than a 1,000 people are assassinated
and others are removed from positions of influence within the
SA and Army.

25/07/1934

Nazis murder Austrian Chancellor
Dollfuss.

02/08/1934

With the death of President
Paul von Hindenburg, Chancellor Adolf Hitler assumes the office
of Reich President as well. The Wehrmacht oath of allegiance
is changed to be directly to Adolf Hitler.

19/08/1934

Hitler combines the offices of president
and chancellor and assumes the title of Führer.

19/09/1934

The Soviet Union joins the League
of Nations.

09/10/1934

The Foreign Minister of
France, Barthou and King Alexander of Yugoslavia are killed
by Croatian terrorists in Marseille, France.

13/01/1935

In a plebiscite, the Saar
region decides to unite with Germany.

16/03/1935

Adolf Hitler denounces
the disarmament clauses of the Versailles Treaty. He announces
that Germany will introduce compulsory military service, thereby
creating an army of 36 divisions. Germany also announces the
existence of the Luftwaffe, which directly infringes upon the
Treaty of Versailles, which forbids Germany to have an airforce.

02/05/1935

France and the Soviet Union conclude
negotiations for a five-year Treaty of Mutual Assistance, although
the treaty is never ratified by France.

16/05/1935

Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union
sign a five-year Treaty of Mutual Assistance.

25/05/1935

Adolf Hitler agrees to
not intevene in Austria or add Austria to the German Reich.

18/06/1935

The Anglo-German Naval
Agreement is signed, limiting the German surface fleet to 35
percent of British tonnage, and submarine fleet to 45 percent.
The agreement signals Britain's unwillingness to defend the
Versailles settlement.

The Italians, wanting
to be a great power in and around the Mediterranean, invade
Abyssinia (Ethiopia).
In direct response the League of Nations decides to impose economic sanctions
against Italy.

10/02/1936

The Gestapo is placed above
German Law.

12/02/1936

Adolf Hitler decides the
time is right for Germany to re-occupy the Rhineland.

27/02/1936

The French chamber ratifies
the Franco-Soviet pact.

02/03/1936

Hitler issues final orders
for troops to re-occupy their former garrison posts in Rhineland
towns. If French forces take action, the troops are instructed
to withdraw.

07/03/1936

Hitler denounces the Rhineland
provisions of Treaty of Versailles and Locarno Treaty. German
troops march in to re-occupy the Rhineland. German representatives
inform foreign ministers and ambassadors of the German re-occupation
of the Rhineland, and outline a peace plan including 25-year
non-aggression pacts for all countries bordering on Germany.

09/05/1936

Italian campaign in Ethiopia
ends and King Haile Selassie I flees the country.

Germany announces "Anschluss"
(Union) with Austria, as German forces cross the border.

24/03/1938

Russian Army Commander B.M. Shaposhnikov
produces a war plan, proposing a Red Army offensive or counter-offensive
either north or south of the Pripet marshes, with a strong
defence in the other sector.

26/04/1938

An order is issued that forces all
Jews to declare fortunes above
5.000
Reichsmarks.

20/05/1938

Czechoslovakia begins to mobilise
its armed forces.

27/05/1938

Swedish Foreign Minister
Sandler announces that Sweden reserves the right to remain neutral.

30/05/1938

Adolf Hitler issues a directive
for Fall Grün (Case Green), for the occupation of Czechoslovakia.

12/09/1938

Hitler says the Sudeten
problem is an internal matter for the German minority in Bohemia
and the Czecho-Slovak government.

15/09/1938

After a meeting with Adolf Hitler
at Bergchtesgarden in Germany, British Prime Minister Neville
Chamberlain states that Adolf Hitler appears to be "a
man who could be relied upon when he had given his word".

21/09/1938

Winston Churchill warns
of the futility of appeasing Adolf Hitler: "The belief
that security can be obtained by throwing a small state to the
wolves is a fatal delusion."

26/09/1938

Adolf Hitler, quoted on his desire
to annex part of Czechoslovakia says: "It is the last
territorial claim which I have to make in Europe, but it is
the claim from
which I will not recede."

Shortly after 0100 hours
the Munich Agreement, allowing Germany to annex the Sudetenland
portion of Czechoslovakia, is signed, by British Prime Minister
Neville Chamberlain, French Premier Édouard Daladier,
Italian leader Benito Mussolini, and Adolf Hitler. Prime
Minister
Neville Chamberlain says "This is the second time that
there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace
with honour.
I believe it is peace for our time."

01/10/1938

German forces occupy the
Sudetenland. The Czech Government resigns.

09/11/1938

Nazi authorities orchestrate a nationwide
pogrom against the Jews in Germany and Austria. This follows
the murder of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath, by Herschel Grynszpan
a French Jew in the German Embassy in Paris. Jewish homes,
businesses, and synagogues are looted and burned. 91 Jews are
killed, and 20,000 are taken to concentration camps. This becomes
known as Kristallnacht (Night of broken glass).

10/11/1938

Adolf Hitler set the press the task
of preparing the german people for war.

28/11/1938

Laws are announced in
Germany that prevent Jews from obtaining driving licences or
visiting theatres, concerts and cinemas.

24/01/1939

SS leader Reinhard Heydrich
is ordered by Göring to speed up emigration of Jews.

27/01/1939

Neville Chamberlain is
criticized by many members of the British Parliament for his
recognition of the Franco government in Spain.

30/01/1939

In his speech before the
Reichstag on the sixth anniversary of his coming to power, Hitler
proclaims... 'In the course of my life I have very often been
a prophet, and have usually been ridiculed for it. During the
time of my struggle for power, it was in the first instance
only the Jewish race that received my prophecies with laughter
when I said that I would one day take over the leadership of
the state and with it that of the whole nation and that I would
then among other things settle the Jewish problem. Their laughter
was uproarious, but I think that for some time now they have
been laughing on the other side of their face. Today I will
once more be a prophet: if the international Jewish financiers
in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations
once more into a world war, then the result will not be the
Bolshevising of the earth and thus the victory of Jewry, but
the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!'.

05/02/1939

The Republican Government
crosses the Pyrenees into France, followed by a flood of refuges.

14/02/1939

The German battleship Bismarck
is first launched.

21/02/1939

Nazis force Jews to hand
over all gold and silver items.

27/02/1939

The British Prime Minister,
Neville Chamberlain recognises Franco's Fascist Government in
Spain.

10/03/1939

Stalin postulates a "kinship"
between Nazism and Communism in his radio speech.

14/03/1939

Czech president Emil Hacha
accepts Adolf Hitler making Bohemia-Moravia a German protectorate.
That same day Slovakia and Ruthenia declare their independence
from the Czech government in Prague.

15/03/1939

Adolf Hitler declares "Czechoslovakia
has ceased to exist" as German troops occupy the
rest of Czechoslovakia, annexing Bohemia and Moravia, making
Slovakia a protectorate and giving Ruthenia to Hungary. This
was all in violation of Munich Agreement of the previous year,
but only produced weak British and French protests.

The Soviet Commissar for
Foreign Affairs, Maxim Litvinov, suggests to British Ambassador
Sir William Seeds that delegates from the UK, Soviet Union,
France, Poland, and Romania should meet to discuss collective
action in the event of war with Germany. British Prime Minister
Neville Chamberlain tells the Cabinet that continuing negotiations
with Adolf Hitler is impossible.

19/03/1939

British Foreign Secretary
Lord Halifax replies to Soviet Commissar Maxim Litinov, saying
they were examining an alternative scheme to a five-country
pact.

21/03/1939

Hitler reiterates his demands
against Poland for the return of Danzig and the "Polish
Corridor" to the Reich.

22/03/1939

Poland again refuses German
demands for the return of Danzig and the "Polish Corridor."

23/03/1939

German troops occupy the
city of Memel, which is situated on the border of East Prussia
and Lithuania. Poland warns Germany that any similar attempt
to seize Danzig would mean war. Poland partially mobilizes its
armed forces.

27/03/1939

At a Foreign Policy Committee
meeting of the British Cabinet, the Ministers decide to side
with Poland, rather than try for a multi-nation agreement involving
the Soviet Union.

28/03/1939

Madrid finally falls to
Franco's forces as the Spanish Civil War nears its end. Poland
again rejects German demands that Danzig be ceded to Germany.

31/03/1939

France and Britain declare
that they will stand by Poland. British Prime Minister Neville
Chamberlain announces in an address to the House of Commons
British support of Polish independence. All resistance by Republican
forces in Spain ends.

01/04/1939

Franco declares the end
of the Civil War in Spain.

03/04/1939

Adolf Hitler issues a directive
to the Army High Command to prepare for an attack on Poland,
code named Fall Weiss (Case White), to be ready to implement
by 1st September.

06/04/1939

Britain and Poland sign
a mutual-assistance pact.

07/04/1939

Mussolini, jealous of Hitler’s
successes, sends his troops into Albania which had been under
Italian influence since the civil war of 1925, in which Italy
had intervened.

13/04/1939

Britain and France pledge
to support Romania and Greece should they be attacked.

15/04/1939

President Roosevelt seeks
assurances from Germany and Italy that they would not attack
another European country. However, such assurances were not
forthcoming. Hitler and Mussolini knew that Roosevelt’s
hands were tied by the 1935-1937 Neutrality Acts, which forbade
the USA from giving help to either side in the event of war.

18/04/1939

The USSR proposes a ten-year
alliance with Britain and France.

19/04/1939

Slovakia passes its own
anti-Jewish version of the Nuremberg Laws.

28/04/1939

Adolf Hitler addresses
the Reichstag in the Kroll Opera House in Berlin. He denounces
the 1934 ten-year non-aggression pact with Poland and the Anglo-German
Naval Agreement of June 1935. Hitler calls the Anglo-Polish
Agreement an alliance directed exclusively against Germany and
demands the return of Danzig to Germany.

30/04/1939

Jews lose rights as tenants
and are relocated into Jewish houses.

06/05/1939

Two warships escort Britain's
King George VI and Queen Elizabeth on a visit to Canada. Each
ship carries about 15 million Pounds Sterling in gold for safekeeping
in Canada.

12/05/1939

Turkey and Great Britain
conclude a security pact.

16/05/1939

In Halifax harbor, Nova
Scotia, Canada, gold from two British warships is transferred
to trains for delivery to Ottawa.

At the Reich Chancellory
in Berlin, Italian Foreign Minister Count Ciano and German
Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop sign a ten-year political
and military alliance, dubbed the Pact of Steel, which guaranteed
support from the other in the event of war.

03/06/1939

Winston Churchill writes in Collier's magazine: "Unless
some change of heart or change of regime takes place in Germany
she will deem it in her interest to make war, and this is more
likely to happen in the present year than later on.

04/07/1939

German Jews denied the
right to hold government jobs.

09/07/1939

Winston Churchill urges
the British government to form a military alliance with the
Soviet Union.

21/07/1939

Adolf Eichmann is appointed
director of the Prague Office of Jewish Emigration.

25/07/1939

Poland gives Britain and
France a German Enigma machine each, whose codes they have broken.

10/08/1939

Albert Forster, Gauleiter
for Danzig and Nazi leader, addresses a crowd of 100,000 in
Danzig: "The hour of liberation is at hand... our Motherland
and our Führer, Adolf Hitler, are determined to support
us." A trial blackout is ordered for London, England,
in preparation for war.

14/08/1939

Poland rejects the USSR's
demand for permission for the Red Army to enter Poland.

15/08/1939

Indian troops arrive in Egypt to reinforce
British forces around the Suez Canal.

16/08/1939

Captain Bertrand of the French Signals
Intelligence gives to a British Secret Service Liaison officer
a Polish-built copy of the German Enigma coding machine.

19/08/1939

Germany and Russia sign
a trade treaty. 14 German U-boats are sent to patrol the North
Atlantic Ocean.

20/08/1939

Soviet forces under Georgi Zhukov
attack the Japanese at Nomanhan in the Mongolian People's Republic
on the border with Manchukuo.

21/08/1939

The German pocket-battleship
Admiral Graf Spee slips through the North Sea, unobserved
by
the British. Adolf Hitler reads a telegram from Josef Stalin,
acknowledging agreement on a non-aggression pact. Hitler responds
by banging his fist on the supper
table, exclaiming "I have them! I have them!". Shortly afterwards
Berlin radio announces that Germany and Russia have concluded a treaty
of non-aggression.

22/08/1939

Hitler authorizes the killing
"without pity or mercy, all men, women and children of
Polish descent or language."

23/08/1939

Germany and the USSR sign
a non-aggression pact in Moscow. A severe blow to the hopes
of Britain and France Poland’s death-knell, since one
of the clauses agreed a split of the country between Germany
and the USSR. It also gave Russia a free hand in the Baltic
states and Bessarabia. Hitler now gives orders for the
invasion of Poland to begin on the 26th August 1939. Another
German pocket-battleship, this time the Deutschland sails through
the North Sea, without the British noticing.

25/08/1939

The Polish-British Common
Defense Pact against Germany is signed. Mussolini complains
to Hitler that he is not yet ready for war. The German battleship
Schleswig-Holstein arrives at Danzig harbour. Hitler cancels
his orders for an attack on Poland and issues Order X, for a
partial mobilization in preparation for war.

26/08/1939

Hitler cancels the order
for the invasion of Poland on this day. He sets a new date
of
the 1st September. The Canadian Government issue orders for
the callup of the militia to protect coastal defences and
vulnerable
industrial points. The Irish Regiment of Canada is called to
active duty. Hitler guarantees the neutrality of Belgium,
Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark and Switzerland.

27/08/1939

Britain and France try
to persuade Poland to negotiate with Germany, but she refuses.
In preparation for war, Poland disperses military aircraft to
small camouflaged airfields around Warsaw.

29/08/1939

The British Admiralty assumes
control of all British-registered merchant ships.

31/08/1939

In Britian the Royal navy
is put on full alert. Army and navy mobilization is commenced,
censorship of all communications to and from the British Isles
is imposed, the Stock Exchange is closed, and civil airplanes
are banned from flying over half of Britain. In Moscow, the
Soviet Parliament unanimously ratifies the Russo-German non-aggression
pact, and Marshal Klemenly Voroshiloff, Commisar of War, announces
the proposed Military Training Law. Conscription age is lowered
from 19 to 17. The Slovak Government calls on Poland to return
the Javorina district territory to Slovakia. Hitler receives
the Polish Ambassador to Berlin, mainly to appease Mussolini,
who is trying to establish a peace formula. The talks lasted
no longer than a few minutes as Hitler had already made up
his mind to invade Poland. Directive Number 1 declares that
at 4:45am on the 1st September 1939, the German Armed Forces
will invade Poland. German radio makes public a proposed 16-point
peace plan the government had proposed for Poland, claiming
Poland refused to accept the terms. The proposal deals with
annexing Danzig, maintaining a corridor from Germany to East
Prussia, and the treatment of minorities in Germany and Poland.
That evening the German radio station at Gliewitz on the German-Polish
border is "attacked by Polish troops". However, all
is not what it seems as these soldiers were actually concentration
camp inmates, dressed in Polish uniforms and organised by the
SS to give Hitler a pretext for invading Poland that he could
show the world.